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How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

washingtonmonthly.com

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Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#21

Post by harryf »

DFHippie wrote: post #16
grinsekatze wrote: post #7

“Fixing yourself” automatically fixes the “Facebook problem”. Because then, Facebook will be completely irrelevant to you.

The question isn't whether Facebook is relevant to you. It's whether it's relevant to 300 million other people. If a problem as 300 million causes, you still have a problem if you cut that down to 299,999,999.

Society has always been manipulated. Facebook has nothing on religions for example.

The real question is whether an individual checking out from Facebook harms themselves in some way e.g. less able to find work? We just need to make sure Facebook never gets endorsement as some kind of identity / passport.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#22

Post by cookiecaper »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #5

> we should consider that the time has come to revive the country’s traditional approach to monopoly. Since the Reagan era, antitrust law has operated under the principle that monopoly is not a problem so long as it doesn’t result in higher prices for consumers. Under that framework, Facebook and Google have been allowed to dominate several industries—not just search and social media but also email, video, photos, an…

Hyper-restrictive copyright and network access laws (coupled with aggressive interpretations a la the RAM Copy Doctrine) are the key overlooked components that have allowed the net to devolve into a giant AOL-Keyword-ized walled garden.

Fix these laws (which doesn't necessarily mean abandoning their core concepts) and the floodgates will open with fresh competition. This is never discussed because these legal mechanisms undergird a massive part of the tech and media industries. It is better to fix the anti-competitive mechanisms at the source than to use the anti-trust kludge to break down people who have simply exploited them too well.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#23

Post by amelius »

HenryBemis wrote: post #8
grinsekatze wrote: post #7

“Fixing yourself” automatically fixes the “Facebook problem”. Because then, Facebook will be completely irrelevant to you.

I "fixed" myself many years ago. I have sinkholed everything-FB. I suggest to anyone that wants to use FB, do so for 10 days, locate the ones they want/need, and then continue their dialogues in a more meaningful manner away from FB and whatsapp (also FB) and keep their comm channels open, without the cancerous environment of FB, with all their tests and manipulation tactics.

Another option is to "unfollow" everybody except for a selected few.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#24

Post by DFHippie »

harryf wrote: post #21
DFHippie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't whether Facebook is relevant to you. It's whether it's relevant to 300 million other people. If a problem as 300 million causes, you still have a problem if you cut that down to 299,999,999.

Society has always been manipulated. Facebook has nothing on religions for example. The real question is whether an individual checking out from Facebook harms themselves in some way e.g. less able to find work? We just need to make sure Facebook never gets endorsement as some kind of identity / passport.

> Society has always been manipulated.

True. And people have always murdered each other. But when millions of people are murdering each other we call it war.

My body is fighting some millions of germs right now. If you add an order of magnitude or two to that I'll be sick. Or dead.

A camel can carry a lot of straw. Enough straw can crush a camel.

At some point we have to deal with the problem.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#25

Post by thisacctforreal »

log_base_login wrote: post #14

Pretty long article that I doubt most will read in its entirety, if at all. It was, however, a good read about social engineering, and I've summarized the points made and the solutions proposed below: >Fear and anger produce a lot more engagement and sharing than joy. >The result is that the algorithms favor sensational content over substance. >Continuous reinforcement of existing beliefs tends to entrench those beli…

I suspect people worried about these issues are a bit more likely to make time & muster attention to read the articles on the topic.

This article was at the very end of my one-sitting article-reading endurance, but it had enough of a flow for me to finish with only a bit of skimming near the end.

Thank you for preparing a great summary :)

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#26

Post by wutbrodo »

chrislloyd wrote: post #12
mlinksva wrote: post #9

Search for 'tax' finds one instance: > This allowed the platforms to centralize the internet, inserting themselves between users and content, effectively imposing a tax on both sides. Sadly this does not contain the obvious fix: tax ads.

I'd love you to go into more detail with this proposal. How would taxing ads be different than just taxing corporations?

> How would taxing ads be different than just taxing corporations?

Without commenting on the wisdom or relevance of the proposal, this seems really simple. Taxing activities disincentivizes them, so you could expect a tax on a specific activity to have the first order effect of reducing that activity.

Tldr: lower advertising budgets

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#27

Post by jdavis703 »

amelius wrote: post #23
HenryBemis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I "fixed" myself many years ago. I have sinkholed everything-FB. I suggest to anyone that wants to use FB, do so for 10 days, locate the ones they want/need, and then continue their dialogues in a more meaningful manner away from FB and whatsapp (also FB) and keep their comm channels open, without the cancerous environment of FB, with all their tests and manipulation tactics.

Another option is to "unfollow" everybody except for a selected few.

I actually did this a few months ago. Today I realized I had gone 7 days without logging into Facebook or even thinking about it. The good thing about unfollowing everyone is that I can still participate in Facebook Events and Groups, both of which many of us still need to coordinate meatspace activity.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#28

Post by exDM69 »

chrislloyd wrote: post #12
mlinksva wrote: post #9

Search for 'tax' finds one instance: > This allowed the platforms to centralize the internet, inserting themselves between users and content, effectively imposing a tax on both sides. Sadly this does not contain the obvious fix: tax ads.

I'd love you to go into more detail with this proposal. How would taxing ads be different than just taxing corporations?

The corporations in question pay very little taxes in the first place, getting them to pay their fair share would be nice.

But I don't think that would change their negative influence on the society.

Re: How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us

#29

Post by pipio21 »

It is obvious for reading just a few lines of this article that the author is extremely biased in support of Clinton and Democrats and he only cares about media manipulation when he loses. If media manipulation in his side it doesn't matter.

I am not American and from my point of view Democrats totally own media attention in the US. They own the artists and famous people space, they own most important TVs and newspapers and so on.

In fact Trump won because of their support, as they only talked about him in preelection time, as they believed Trump was way weaker than other Republican candidates.

Now this man is socked not because Facebook is a manipulation media, like TV or Newspapers, but because other entities could control it as well as they can.

For this man it was obvious that Hillary was going to win (because they control most media) so it was a big surprise that people could actually vote on their own in a democracy system.

The day they lost the election he wants to talk with Zuckerberg to "make them aware of the problems" of facebook not being a totally biased platform like the New York times or Washington Post is.

Again as a non American I don't want to be manipulated by either side. I don't want to be forced to go to a WWIII just because some people can't deal with losing a democratic election or because some guy impulsive action.

So it looks to me that the best solution is to design alternatives to facebook that are not as centralized and to start using them even if they are not as good.

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